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Topic: Where's the Honey? (Read 2955 times)

OK I've been in this a year now. One hive and looking forward to harvesting my first honey. I have one shallow super on the hive now for 3 weeks and have yet to see any sign of activity in that portion of the hive. I have 4 other shallow supers ready to go.Since I am new to this, I don't know when I can expect to get full supers ready to extact. Any advise for an anxious beekeeper? I live in west Tennessee.

I do have an excluder between the super and the brood nest. I have not checked the entire brood nest this season. I have started but not finished. I'm timid beginner and am not yet comfortable with totally dismantling a hive and checking it out. Tried that last year and had the girls pretty upset when it was done. I blame that on not being patient enough with my smoker.

Unusually cool weather here the last week and a half has hampered my effort toward going through the nest and seeing it's condition. From what I can see, everything looks in order. Brood, Honey Pollen.......How do you tell the difference between worker and drone brood? I hope to finish going through the brood nest in the next few days. I plan on reversing the brrod nest boxes then.

As all you can probably tell, I need a mentor really bad. I enjoy this site lots!

I'm betting you could find someone therehttp://www.tnbeekeepers.org/locals.htmLocal clubs are important for local infoThe varity of climates and different blooms makes it hard to gauge one area to another.Good Luck

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"Lurch my good man,â€¦what did you mean when you said just now that 'You've got better things to do than run my petty little errands'â€¦â€¦.?"

If they aren't doing as much as you like and you reverse the boxes and if the brood is split between the boxes you'll set them back another couple of weeks trying to reorganize the brood nest you disrupted.

I live in south central mississippi and from my experience it's still too early. I have supers on all my hives and most are almost full of honey but none of it capped out yet. You normally don't get capped honey until the fist full moon in may around here. Should be close for you in TN. I don't use excluders. I will check my hives some time next week. If they have about 3/4 of the super filled, (curing honey, not capped) I will bottom super that hive. That way when the honey cures and they start capping I get 2 supers at a time. Good luck

the diff between the worker and drone is if you open the hive and see a bees warching the games on sun. having a beer is a drone and the worker bee is the one giving the finger to the drone LOLL :lol:

well of course your not going to see much from my readings is that anywhere in the 60's and below just let them work ( like me they arnt cold friendly) I waited almost 10 days before I bothered them just making sure they had sugar water. And I understand you folks in Tenn. have gotten alot of cold rainy weather there......Patience grasshopper patience

I think I can identify the drones now! I was wondering where the beer bottle tops was coming from. I took some pics about 3 weeks ago that have a good example of what you are describing (rebelrx) I wish I could figure how to get it on here and show yall! Thanks

Posting pictures really isn't that hard. Do a search on the forum about posting pictures, and you'll find lots of post that describe how to do it. If still confused after that, PM me or any of the moderators, and we'll explain.

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